Okay, I’ve now seen way too many offers of YouTube videos questioning the genetic parentage of the Sussex kiddos. There some haggard looking blond woman who seems to go by “Lady C” that has a whole slew of 'em, but plenty of others, stuff about timing of births and whether Meghan’s baby bumps were consistent and secret DNA tests and on and on.
What I’m wondering about is what rules actually apply? Nowadays, where the genetics of a child can actually be established and medical science offers more possibilities for variations.
I believe there has to be a legal marriage between parents of the child, yes? Otherwise there have no doubt been slews of royal bastards, some more or less acknowledged, but who didn’t count as heirs.
I’ve never heard of an openly adopted child who was considered to be the automatic heir – have there been any?
Have there been children born in royal marriages where the child has been, er, disinherited because the husband denied he was that actual father? Like, he was away fighting in a war in a different country during the conception window?
Of course, nowadays we get all the surrogacy options, too.
If it were established that Meghan didn’t actually give birth to the kids, are they flat out ruled out of the succession line? As in, not being born to the married couple?
Would it make a difference if Harry was or was not the sperm donor?
Well, there was Richard III, who claimed his brother Edward IV had a previous marriage before marrying Elizabeth Woodville and thus Edward V (one of the princes in the tower) was illegitimate. This was never seriously believed.
Before that, Richard claimed that his brother Edward IV was not the legitimate son of Richard of York and that his reign was illegitimate. Note that Edward’s mother was still living at this point, so it probably led to some awkward family gatherings since he was basically calling her a whore. He later dropped the claim.
AIUI, it is legally presumed by default that a woman’s husband is the father of any children born during that marriage, and paternity testing members of the royal family is something that is Simply Not Done.
A previous Harry (Henry VIII) was the “sperm donor” for his daughter Elisabeth. Nevertheless, he disinherited her on the basis that he had his marriage to her mother Anne Boleyn annulled, thus making Bessy a bastard.
Well, if you remember that there are also groups claiming the Royal Family are secret Reptile people, suddenly those claims come into focus- crazy talk.
It was seriously beleived by Parliament and many others. But not quite a 'secret marriage" instead the claim was that Edward IV had a binding pre-marriage contract with Eleanor Butler. Under the law then, such a pre-contract made this union a legal marriage, which legally rendered Edward’s later marriage void.
The argument in canon law was made up of two strands of evidence, both equally important. First that there had been a contract of marriage between Edward and Lady Eleanor Butler (born Talbot) before he married Elizabeth Woodville in May 1464. This would be understood to have consisted of vows exchanged in the present tense, ‘I do marry you’ – no witness or priest was necessary – followed by intercourse. The second fact of Richard’s claim – often forgotten by commentators – was that Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth was clandestine, private, before only a few witnesses, with no banns called and no participation of the king’s ministers.
The Precontract
The fact of the pre-contract cannot now be proved, although it could have been known to many persons in 1483, but there is no doubt that Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth was clandestine. Eleanor Talbot-Butler was not available to testify to the precontract as she had died in 1468. She had in fact died before the boy children of Edward IV were born, and thus under modern law, the adulterous nature of Edward’s second union would have ended before they were born. This did not help their legitimacy in the fifteenth century, however: ‘adultery, when coupled with a present contract of marriage’, was an impediment to the subsequent marriage of the two adulterers. Thus even after Eleanor’s death, Edward could not have married Elizabeth under canon law.
AFAIK, that did not happen.
Of course the real reason was that England did not want a “boy king” as that had caused issues.
It was urgent that there should be a king, and it was generally undesirable that a child should be on the throne,
Monaco changed its succession laws in 2002, but before that, an adopted child could inherit. (Don’t get your hopes up. The law was used to enable a Prince to legitimate a bastard without having to marry the ex-mistress.) Princess Charlotte, the mother of Ranier III was born illegitimate, but after her father formally adopted her, she was the official heir to the throne. When her son came of age, she renounced her rights in his favor, so we never got to see an adoptee inherit. But for a while, it was officially possible.
Aren’t “is this child legitimate (born to parents in legal wedlock)” and “is this child the father’s offspring” two different questions? The former is the only one that mattered, historically, and I suspect is still legally the case.
I suspect that’s true for non-royal inheritance, as well. Certainly for adoption, which creates kinship by means of law.
Under the British laws on succession, you inherit the throne by being an “heir to the body lawfully begotten”, which means born in wedlock. The paternity presumption (according to which a married woman’s children are presumed to be the husband’s) applies. By the way, you don’t actually have to be born to displace others in the line of succession; being conceived is enough. For example, when Victoria ascended to the throne, the proclamation of her reign included a proviso that if a child fathered by her late predecessor (William IV, her uncle) were born, Victoria would be superseded.
Also, until 2013, if the person to succeed is a descendant of George II, the marriage into which he or she was born must have been approved by the king at the time; non-approved marriages were void under British law. This rule was abolished in 2013, as was the rule that candidates who marry a Catholic are disqualified. Another rule, however, remains according to which being a Catholic yourself disqualifies you.
They would be out of the succession, yes, at least under current rules.
There is an analogous situation in the British aristocracy. The Marquess of Bath and his wife are the genetic parents of two children, but due to the Marchioness’s health problems during her first pregnancy, their second son was carried by a surrogate and does not meet the definition of “heir of the body,” so is not in line for the title. A 2026 High Court decision allowed the trustees to add the younger boy as a beneficiary to the family trust, however.
Children adopted into a family do not acquire rights of succession to a title, and children adopted out of a family do not lose their rights. An Earl Marshal’s Warrant dated 30 April 2004 decreed that the adopted children of peers should be accorded the styles and courtesy titles as are proper to the younger children of peers, but without right of succession to the peerage. Thus, for example, the adopted son of the Marquess of Ely is now known as Lord Andrew Tottenham (which is the style for the younger son of a marquess), rather than Viscount Loftus, which is the subsidiary title for that peerage.
Yes, and thank you for the clarifying question. A child who is born to parents in legal wedlock is never a bastard, even if the woman’s husband was not the father of the child. It’s all about the legality, not the actuality.
A true sentiment which has been repeated on this board many times, starting at least when Harry was born. Ooh, I wonder if Charles was the father? You’ll never find out.
Wouldn’t that require that other members of the royal family also had their DNA done? Like someone from William’s line, and therefore possibly not far from the throne. Or else if it happened to match someone else in the database, i.e. the actual father or one of his descendants. I concede that such secrets are harder than ever to keep these days.
I pretty much wish people would stop paying attention to an issue that really only matters to those people who are making money by stirring things up on YouTube.
Adoption has only been possible in England since 1926, the year Elizabeth II was born, so even if it was possible, there wouldn’t have been many opportunities for it to come up. People took in children and became their legal guardians before 1926, but it wasn’t legally a parent-child relationship.
So presumably for nobility a DNA test means nothing; the wife gives birth, Junior is (sorry) entitled.
What of the opposite tact - Lord Heehaw disaproves of Junior - either his wanton lifestyle or his inappropraite tattoos, and does not want him to inherit the title? Can he disinherit like he can cut him out of the will?
Obviously, for the crown, it is up to parliament to change things - Henry VIII’s daughters were off-again-on-again as whims struck him; and James and his heirs were struck from the list in favour of Wiliam and Mary. Does parliamnet have a say in other peerage lines? (Do they even care?)
They identified Richard III’s skeleton through mitochondrial DNA testing after he was found underneath a parking lot in Leicester, but it was through a very distant descendant - his 16th-generation matrilineal grand-niece, who was living in Canada at the time and is presumably several million places outside the line of succession.
No, the rules of succession for a hereditary peerage were defined when the peerage was created, i.e. when it was granted to its first holder. They are not at the disposal of the current holder, so it’s not possible by will or otherwise to modify those rules or exclude an heir other than by Act of Parliament (see below).
Not as a matter of course; the basic idea is that peerages are created by the Crown, which would usually act on the advice of the government. Once created, a peerage becomes a legal entitlement, so even the Crown cannot take it away against the holder’s will. For hereditary peerages this is all somewhat theoretical since the Crown has stopped creating new ones except within the Royal Family; and for life peerages it doesn’t really matter since those will cease to exist upon the holder’s death. But as a matter of law this principle is well settled. Even the possibility for the holder to disclaim a peerage voluntarily was not introduced until 1963. (It was prompted by Tony Benn, a Labour politician, inheriting his father’s peerage; this made Benn a member of the House of Lords, and thus disqualified him from the House of Commons, so he campaigned for legislation to allow him to disclaim the peerage so he could stand for election.)
But now the most fundamental rule in all of British law comes into play, which is the principle of sovereignty of Parliament. This means that Parliament can, by means of legislation, amend or abrogate any legal provision it wishes to. So if you really want to strip a peer of his peerage against his will, you could do it by Act of Parliament. But this is highly unusual and would most likely occur only in very exceptional circumstances; the classic example is the Deprivation of Titles Act 1917, by means of which the King’s German relatives were stripped of their British titles.
So what was the status of Edward “Bertie” VII? He abdicated, and specifically he or someoe disinherited any possible future lineage, should he find a fresh young face after Simpson. Was that someone parliament? Or would the palace be able to specifically block any marriage and so render it as considered illegal?
Are you talking about Edward 8? Parliament ratified his abdication (and the change in succession). If he had not abdicated yet married “against the advice of his ministers”, it would have been .. problematic, and the PM told him so.
Yes, it took an Act of Parliament to give legal effect to the abdication; this was by means of a statute with a rather cool name, the His Majesty’s Declaration of Abdication Act 1936 (which Edward VIII himself gave royal assent to). In the absence of this statute, one could at least build an argument that the question who is British monarch is authoritatively settled by statute law (the Act of Settlement 1701), and that a unilateral abdication could not alter this.
This raises another interesting point: The British monarch is, simultaneously, also monarch of a range of other kingdoms (currently 15, including the UK itself). Even though the monarch is the same in person, the monarchies are institutionally separate, and each of these kingdoms has its separate legal system. That’s why it takes concurrent legislation in all these realms to amend the line of succession. This was done in 1936 and 1937 for the abdication of Edward VIII, and it was also done in 2013, when the male preference (brothers take priority over sisters irrespective of order of birth) was abolished.